Etymologies

Examples

The notion of a “hidden meaning” is present in all religious texts; except for Christianity, which has severed all ties with esoterism, formally and brutally, in the 6th century AD, all other texts have an exoteric i.e. literal reading and an esoteric one.

We do not appear to have any direct proof of the existence of "mysteries" of Isis and Serapis {230} prior to the Empire, but all probabilities are in favor of a more ancient origin, and the mysteries were undoubtedly connected with the ancient Egyptian esoterism.

They understand, because they feel, the inevitable esoterism that must persist at the kernel of all democracies, unless these degenerate into mere rabble and intellectual mob: they are the last, therefore, to maintain that one person's word is as good as another's; that common sense is competent to solve all questions; that freedom of thought means the right of all to think as they please.

The morbid propensity of the age for esoterism, magic, and confederacies caused the "Fama" to raise a feverish excitement in men's minds, expressed in a flood of writings for and against the brotherhood, and in passionate efforts to win admission to the order, or at least to discover who were its members.

As we are not bound by Maimonides's principle of esoterism and mystery, nor are we in fear of being an offence and a stumbling block to the fools, we shall proceed more directly in our exposition of his philosophy; and shall begin with Maimonides's general ideas on the need of science for intelligent faith and the relation thereto of Jewish history and literature.